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2009-07-08

Google's Open-Source Chrome OS

Google joins battle with Microsoft with Chrome operating system

Google Chrome OS is a development of its “Chrome” web browser. The search giant initially aims to put the new system on small low-cost computers known as “netbooks”, which have been selling better than more powerful PCs. Google said that it believed the software will eventually be used on PCs as well.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.[...]

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

[...] This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?[...]What Google is doing is not recreating a new kind of OS, they’re creating the best way to not need one at all.

So why release this new OS instead of using Android? After all, it has already been successfully ported to netbooks. Google admits that there is some overlap there. But a key difference they don’t mention is the ability to run on the x86 architecture.

Still, Windows and OSX will always have a spacious home in the computer world, undoubtedly. Some apps will always require native architecture, and the businessmen, code-monkeys, graphic designers, video editors and other connoisseurs of nuanced computing would be foolhardy to try and work strictly in the cloud.

But the final hurdle for Google to overcome is easy, accessible online storage. Will they be able to go after Amazon's S3 cloud servers? And perhaps more importantly, will they be able to offer the service for free? If they can let us really extend our hard drives into the cloud, look out. Chrome OS will be a force to be reckoned with.